Thursday, June 27, 2013

"You may read a lot or a little, but either way you're a publisher's
dream, because once you discover a favorite writer you stick with
him/her through thick and thin and eagerly await the next in the series;
but even you need to discover some new blood from time to time!"

Yup! That sounds about right. Without NetGalley, I might never try new authors, especially now that my local bookstores are all shut down and I don't have time to go out to others for serious browsing time.

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Jane Yellowrock is the best vamp hunter there is because she's got a secret; she's a skinwalker. With a tiny bit of DNA, she can shift into any creature, big or small. That means that she can track any vamp through any territory.

But Jane's no ordinary skinwalker. She's got an even bigger secret. The Beast lurks in her, speaks to her, gives her advice, and sometimes takes over.

How the Beast got in her is something Jane has never known. All she knows is that she walked out of the forest years ago, was told at the time that she was 12 years old, and had to learn how to be human.

Now she's in New Orleans, hired to take down a rogue vamp who's killing vamps and humans around the city. If she can provide proof of the kill within 10 days, she stands to make quite a bit of cash. But tracking the vamp is harder than she thought and the whole hunt is complicated by a couple very sexy humans and a beyond sexy vamp.

They're all interested and interesting, but they're a distraction she can't afford.

Final thoughts: This was recommended by Amazon because of my penchant for supernatural urban lit. Unfortunately, it's not a good fit. I didn't like the changing voices of Jane and The Beast. There was far too much time spent on describing everything from buildings, to clothes, to her shifting, to how she took her many, many showers. Jane also had a habit of giving people nicknames and then shifting between calling the characters by name and then by nickname. It made the large cast even more confusing. The story itself was a little winding and strange. It was OK, but I have no need to read the next one.

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Two years after Audrey McCarthy's father died in a freak accident on the job, Audrey is barely getting by in the high school social scene. She's a hacker with a small group of friends and she's on the enemy list of her former BFF.

Now an opportunity comes for a $200k scholarship, if only should could use her amazing programming and hacking skills to come up with the best phone app.

After years of being ignored by guys, while pining after a few, Audrey comes up with the perfect plan: the boyfriend app. With a few clicks and a few survey questions, girls can get a notification whenever her perfect match is within 100 yards of her.

The first few matches seem perfect, but can she get it to last long enough to make it the most popular app of the contest?

Final thoughts: The first half of this book is really good. I enjoyed Audrey and her friends. The problems come when the author decides she has to go into tons of details about hacking and programming. It kind of goes on and on. The second half becomes a mess with mystery, intrigue, and computer espionage. It gets messy and strange. Mix in the highly questionable choices about the direction of the app and it's just all weird.

Friday, June 7, 2013

When Sep stares into the mirror the morning of the first day of school, something's different.

Her lips are now completely white.

Then a spot appears on her hand.

Another shows up on her chest.

And more keep appearing over the next few weeks.

She's diagnosed with vitiligo, an incurable disease that causes the skin pigmentation to change, permanently, to white. It's unpredictable, but not contagious, and Sep will have to learn to live with it forever.

Before it spreads so far that she has to admit to everyone around her what's going on, Sep is determined to get the most out of life and the new guy who just started taking an interest in her.

Can she find a way to have it all before it all is taken away?

Final thoughts: This one has me confused. There is so much good to this story and it could be a real help to people who find themselves in similar situations, but there are too many problems. The first, of course, is the sexual situation issue. It's a natural progression to the story, but Napoli really didn't need to describe it in detail. It takes the book from a good middle school book to upper high school with just a few pages. The second issue is Sep's compulsion to spend page after page describing facts she's discovered about salmon and Vishnu and other scientific and philosophic things that come up in her life. Finally, Joshua's nice and all, but the ending seemed odd. While more realistic than many books, it felt unfinished.

Thursday, June 6, 2013

My current fave is the Charley Davidson series by Darynda Jones. But there's also The Grave Witch series by Kalayna Price and the Chicagoland Vampires by Chloe Neill. And, of course, there's also the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs.

Right now, I'm on an urban supernatural kick, and those tend to be long-running series books rather than just trilogies. There are some really good dystopian series though, like The Hunger Games, Divergent, Across the Universe, Matched, and more.

Sunday, June 2, 2013

All her life, Cameron has had to hide her ability to read minds. Every time someone even suspects she might be talented, her grandmother moves them somewhere else. She's always had to live with the fear that "they" are coming to get her and she must stay away from them.

After a murder in her current small town, Cam realizes that she can do some good by stopping the murderer before he strikes again. Helping to push her on is the new, mysterious Lewis, a cute new student who just showed up and seems to know more about her than anyone else.

Lewis has a few secrets of his own, and when he shows Cameron that there are others who understand her and can help her control her abilities, Cam knows this is an opportunity that she can't ignore.

But just because she has found people who know what she's going through, that doesn't mean she can trust them.

Final thoughts: Ok. Not fabulous. I get that Cam's going through some major stuff, but she comes off really naive and kind of whiny. Too many things never added up in the story and other things were so obviously wrong that you're shocked that Cam can't see it. ::SPOILER:: If Aaron can erase memories, why not just erase Cam's memories of the world outside his camp and keep her around? He seems manipulative enough that he'd be willing to do anything to keep her around, not just let her go.::END SPOILER::

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